2×4 founders Michael Rock and Susan Sellers made their first major mark in the design community in 1994, with their work on Anyone Corporation’s magazine ANY and its annual conference books.

2×4 employed an algorithmic approach to the design of ANY. Imposing a predetermined set of rules and a limited range of typefaces for each issue, the designers performed a “rigorous examination of the grid” that emphasized the structural interactions played out upon the page. This allowed for a fresh design with each issue, inspired by the themes selected by respective guest editors. This lack of uniformity allowed every installment of ANY to become, in effect, a one-off object.

The first issue of ANY to appear with 2×4’s new design was number nine, “The Bigness of Rem Koolhaas,” published in May 1994. The issue coincided with a solo exhibition of Koolhaas’s work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and served as the de facto catalogue for the show. 2×4’s work on this issue would lead to numerous other collaborations with Koolhaas over the following decade, from the Prada stores in New York and Los Angeles to the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

2×4 continued to work on ANY through issue twenty-one, returning in 2001 to design the final installment, number twenty-seven.